Education Reform in New York City: Ambitious Change in the Nation's Most Complex School System

Citation

Montoro Donchik, L. (2012), "Education Reform in New York City: Ambitious Change in the Nation's Most Complex School System", Journal of Educational Administration, Vol. 50 No. 4, pp. 519-523. https://doi.org/10.1108/09578231211238620

The distinctive and comprehensive school reform efforts instituted by mayoral control in New York City from 2002 to the present have been the focus of much media attention and have been influential on school reform efforts across the nation. Mayor Bloomberg's and Chancellor Joel Klein's Children First reform initiative evolved over 2002‐2010 and instituted “three pillars for system change and improvement” (p. 1). The three pillars include empowerment and autonomy of school leadership with support for success, developing leadership capacity at the school level and system wide, and accountability and performance management of schools and student outcomes. Mayoral control in New York City, the sweeping structural changes, and Children First reform efforts have been applauded by some and vilified by others. The reform efforts have been a source of political controversy as well as a source of hope for various stakeholders with diverse interests and perspectives.

Education Reform in New York City: Ambitious Change in the Nation's Most Complex School System (2011) edited by Jennifer A. O'Day, Catherine S. Bitter, and Louis M. Gomez is a volume of commissioned papers providing analyses and explorations of the Bloomberg/Klein reform and restructuring policies of the New York City School system. This volume documents these reform efforts and serves as an informative source of historical context, analyses of policy implementation and detailed explanations of the ambitious reform efforts in the largest urban school district in the nation. The articles were originally commissioned for The NYC Education Reform Retrospective Project. This project was funded in 2009 by the American Institutes for Research with support from four other foundations with the purpose of documenting “key reform policies of NYC's Children First initiative” (p. 2). The papers were later presented at the Retrospective invitational conference in November 2010 and were edited for this volume. The authors and articles were selected based on expertise in the field as well as “their independence and ability to present a balanced perspective on the topic in question” (p. 3). It is important to note that the editors clearly state that this volume is not intended as an evaluation of any parts of the Bloomberg/Klein school reforms or of the Children First Initiative. The volume is organized into five parts and 12 chapters.

Part 1 “Governance and management” provides analyses and explanations of the leadership and management reforms Bloomberg/Klein initiated in NYC schools. Chapter 1, “Leadership and governance in New York City school reform” by Hill, explains the major leadership changes that were made under Bloomberg/Klein. Hill makes a distinction between governance and leadership and describes the Bloomberg/Klein reform efforts allowed much more “leadership” through empowerment of the school leadership in exchange for increased accountability and improvement in student outcomes. Hill argues that the decisive actions of the Bloomberg/Klein partnership and reform efforts and strategies they put forth, even though many critics viewed them as antithetical to democratic processes, were enacted with a “deeply democratic purpose [of]‐providing good education for the disadvantaged” (p. 29).

Chapter 2, “Parent and community engagement in New York City and the sustainability challenge for urban education reform” by Henig, Gold, Orr, Silander and Simon, situates the Bloomberg/Klein school reform efforts in the historical context of parent and community engagement struggles in the school district. The authors give a comprehensive background of the struggles for parent and community voice in school policy formulation as well as the tensions that arose among parent/community groups, the central administration and the state legislature during the transition to mayoral control. The authors provide a typology of four “conceptions of the proper role of engagement” (p. 36) as a lens to analyze the DOE initiatives for parent and community engagement. The authors present Bloomberg's mayoral control policies that highlight “collective engagement as a potential source of good ideas and feedback on what is and is not working” (p. 43) as well as parent/community groups' advocacy efforts for a stronger democratic role in policy decisions. The article presents multiple facets of the complex issue of what parent and community engagement is and should be and how it plays out in New York City for various stakeholders. They conclude that sustaining school reform efforts in urban settings without including the community in decision making may prove difficult when district and city leadership change.

Chapter 3, Financing K‐12 education in the Bloomberg years, 2002‐2008, by Steifel and Schwartz provides an examination of the funding sources and the amount of resources that were available for the Children First initiative as well as some of the ways these resources were used. Steifel and Schwartz present comprehensive statistical analyses of the per pupil expenditures across schools during the Bloomberg/Klein years and how NYC expenditures compare to New York State. The amount of resources available during the Bloomberg/Klein years was exceptional and may have facilitated certain components of the Children First reforms. The authors found that policies enacted during this period allocated more funds to higher poverty schools. Also, the revenues during these years increased in NYC and per pupil expenditures increased as compared to the rest of the state, yet “more‐costly‐to‐educate special education students”(p. 64) also increased during this period. The authors address the philanthropic funds that were also available during this period. They do not make any causal claims between increased per pupil spending during this period and student outcomes, as that is beyond the scope of their analyses, however they do conclude that in the current financial climate locally and nationally, it may become difficult to sustain this level of per pupil spending and sustain Children First reform efforts.

Part 2 “Teaching and learning” includes chapters 4 through 7 addressing various aspects of the Children First Initiative and instruction. Chapter 4, “Managing for results at the New York City Department of Education by Childress, Higgins, Ishimaru and Takahashi, describes the Bloomberg/Klein approach to improving student outcomes and improving schools, explaining the DOE's theory of action through an organizational learning framework as well as some exploratory analyses of teachers' perceptions of school culture during the Bloomberg/Klein years. The authors explain that the new performance management approach under Bloomberg/Klein to improve student achievement is characterized by “the autonomy‐accountability exchange” (p. 107) which differs from other urban school districts by increasing school principals' autonomy while increasing accountability pressure as well. They conclude that the exploration of this performance management approach and the theories of autonomy, accountability and organizational learning may prove useful to other school districts, practitioners, and scholars.

Chapter 5, “Improving instruction in New York City by O'Day and Bitter describes the “evolution of instructional reform” under the Children First initiative to address in what ways these reforms have affected classroom instruction throughout the city. O'Day and Bitter analyzed documents and interview data of over 60 participants in Children First reform efforts from February 2009 through May 2010 to address this research question. The authors conclude that the Children First reforms have “put in place a set of tools and structures that have the potential for influencing classroom instruction” (p. 127). However they also highlight some areas in need of improvement to impact classroom instruction and give suggestions for NYC DOE's next steps.

Chapter 6, “Collaborative inquiry to expand student success in New York City schools” by Talbert describes the history of the Bloomberg/Klein Inquiry initiative, explains how this model addresses student achievement, and examines challenges to sustaining “inquiry‐based school reform”(p. 131). Talbert gives a comprehensive explanation of inquiry teams of teachers working together to improve instruction for their students by analyzing and deliberating over student achievement data. Talbert highlights the considerable challenges that school leaders face when implementing inquiry teams in an authentic and productive way. The challenges of building capacity at many levels, the demands of accountability mechanisms and internal politics are delineated and explored.

Chapter 7 entitled “Recruiting, evaluating, and retaining teachers: the children first strategy to improve New York City's teachers” by Goertz, Loeb, and Wyckoff describes the policies and practices put in place under Bloomberg/Klein “intended to directly and indirectly improve the quality and effectiveness of teachers”(p. 158), as well as assess their effectiveness in terms of student achievement outcomes. The Children First reform efforts have included a multi‐faceted approach to raising the quality of NYC teachers through a variety of incentives. The authors conclude that the reform efforts have had a positive impact on the teaching force however they stress that more needs to be done to continue improving instruction in schools, especially the most challenging, low performing schools and schools serving students of color and students from lower SES backgrounds.

Part 3, “High school reform” opens with Chapter 8, “Changing contexts and the challenge of high school reform in New York City” by Siskin. This chapter explains the historical context of NYC's high school reform efforts as well as the current reform climate across the nation. Particularly, Siskin identifies seven important changes that have occurred under the “new regime” during the Bloomberg/Klein years. The daunting tasks of improving student outcomes, reducing dropout rates and being “college‐ready” has been central to the DOE's reform efforts and from Siskin's research, the DOE sees progress towards their goals. The high school reform initiatives are ambitious and the seven important changes are covered in detail. However, the need for more high school‐specific instructional and managerial support remains profound.

Chapter 9, “School choice and competition in the New York City schools” by Corcoran and Levin provides a historical overview of school choice in NYC and the ways school choice has changed. Corcoran and Levin also explain the current high school admissions process and present descriptive analyses of high school matching from 2005‐2008. The active promotion of charter schools by Bloomberg/Klein, as well as the rapid expansion of charter schools throughout NYC from 2002 as well as the creation of many new DOE schools (while closing low‐performing schools) has increased the options available to families. The authors highlight the theory underpinning Bloomberg/Klein's expanded school choice options in NYC, which is based on competition among and between schools and having a variety of types of schools to improve the educational system overall. The authors find that there is more transparency and equity under these changes, especially through the improved high school admissions process. However, they point out that increased school choice does not necessarily relate to improved student outcomes and could potentially “increase stratification by race, academic ability and socioeconomic status” (p. 224).

Chapter 10, “How students' views predict graduation outcomes and reveal instructional disparities under Children First reforms” by Ferguson uses analyses of NYC DOE student surveys and Tripod surveys as predictive of graduation outcomes and passing Regent scores. Furthermore, Ferguson uses the analyses of student survey data to explicate classroom practices and teaching in different schools as well as differences between classrooms in the same school. These data suggest that there are not only correlations between student's views of positive teaching and learning environments and graduation outcomes, but causal relationships. Ferguson suggests that using student survey data and including their perspectives on teachers can improve and inform teaching and teachers' practices and support Children First reforms.

Part 4 “Student outcomes” consists of chapter 11, “Children First student outcomes: 2003‐2010” by James J. Kemple. Kemple uses comparative interrupted time series analysis to analyze whether improvements in test scores and increases in high school graduation rates can be attributed to Children First reforms, or are reflective of prior reform initiatives in NYC, the state or nation. Kemple examines state assessment data, NAEP data, and high school graduation rates of students with and without disabilities. Kemple finds that national, state and prior NYC reform efforts contributed to improvements in test scores and graduation rates. However, there is evidence to support Children First reforms had positive effects on test scores and graduation rates for students with and without disabilities. He suggests areas for further research that explores student performance outcomes for other student subgroups such as English language learners.

The final section, Part 5, “Themes and commentary”, consists of the chapter 12, “Reflections on Children First” by O'Day and Bitter pulls out the themes that are woven throughout the preceding articles along with thoughtful reflections and opinions of many prominent practitioners, scholars and stakeholders in field of education. The editors highlight the usefulness of this collection of articles as a contribution to the “reform dialogue” in NYC as well as the nation. The incorporation of the commentary contributes some of the competing views of the successes and failures of the Children First Initiative in the Bloomberg/Klein era.

This volume is a comprehensive collection of articles that give historical context to the Bloomberg/Klein era of school reform and the Children First initiative. The collection documents the theories of action, implementation and formulation of policies and some of the outcomes of the reform efforts during the 2002‐2010 period in NYC schools. The New York City school system is often looked to for the reforms and changes coming down the pike for public education across the nation. The sweeping changes of Bloomberg's mayoral control of the schools and his partnership with Klein represent a unique period in public education reform. This volume is a valuable resource for scholars and practitioners to learn about the scope of these reform efforts as well as relevant for any reader who would like to gain more insight and information on one of the most controversial and complex education reform efforts of our time.